Fed sets October 31 meeting to vote on bank deregulation rules

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Reserve will consider a proposal that would ease rules for all but the nation’s largest banks at an Oct. 31 board meeting, the central bank announced on Wednesday.

The proposal, which has yet to be unveiled, would implement several major provisions of a bank deregulation bill Congress passed in May. Most notably, the law directs the Fed to ease oversight of banks with $100 billion to $250 billion in assets.

The meeting will be cheered by the banking industry, which has been eager to hear from the Fed on how it intends to implement this mandate.

Randal Quarles, the Fed’s top regulatory official, said earlier this month the regulatory package could include more relaxed capital and liquidity rules for smaller, simpler banks, as well as fewer “stress tests” of their operations.

Quarles has also suggested tailoring rules for super-regional banks Capital One (COF.N), PNC (PNC.N) and US Bancorp (USB.N), that sit above the $250 billion threshold but are still much smaller than the largest global banks.

The rewrite of the 2010 Dodd-Frank law passed by Congress in May raised the threshold by which banks are considered “systemically risky” and subject to stricter oversight from $50 billion to $250 billion.

Banks between $50 billion and $100 billion in assets were immediately freed of stricter regulation when it became law.